


When He Followed Her Home

by natalexx



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-03
Updated: 2007-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalexx/pseuds/natalexx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So it's true. I'm in your head. You can hear me. We're connected, Kara."</p>
            </blockquote>





	When He Followed Her Home

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: S3, takes place post-‘Exodus, part 2’ and ignores canon from there on.
> 
> Beta'ed (twice!) and vastly improved by the patient sagacious-c on LiveJournal, with much thanks.

_Galactica_ was stark and cold and Kara had never been fond of it. Not of the ship itself, anyway, though once when she needed a home she had created a whole world from it. She liked bright colors, expressive music, art and poetry. She liked chaos and new people. Coming home granted her no peace and she searched herself and found she wasn’t grateful. Everything was exactly the same yet the things she loved had changed.

She could walk every hall in the ship blindfolded, even packed tightly as they were with transient civilians. The faces she knew, she avoided, and the faces that were unfamiliar, she ignored. It left her free of distractions, and if she needed something to blame, that would be it but she doesn’t bother with denial. She could kill his body—and she had, many times—but he never really left and it wasn’t over yet.

No one knew her when she stopped erratically in the middle of a causeway, spun around and walked the other way, clenching her arms across her chest. A moment later, she would pace the other way. She would lower her chin and look uneasy, but the line of her jaw warned anyone from attempting to approach or comfort. Had they been interested. She was just another traumatized girl out of a thousand, and easy to disregard.

At first she didn’t notice the isolation she created, thinking it a change in the ship, in the military world, or in the people who had survived New Caprica. She found that Leoben filled the empty spaces, always in front of her whether there was anyone there at all. So when she listened to nothing else, he was all she could hear, and it was easy to pretend the silence had been her friend all along.

*

The first time she kills him, it’s with a knife: a long, jagged twist of metal she hoarded greedily until it was just the right time. She stands close to him, looks into his eyes as he dies. Surprise overlaps with the flood of pain, broken by comprehension, then almost immediate acceptance. It is in the moment of death that he seems most human, and when he dies, she staggers involuntarily with guilt, following him down—to the floor, blood on her hands, in her eyes, coating her hair. And she stops looking for distance, stops pulling away from him when the blood starts to flow. It isn’t the same when she isn’t looking in his eyes. He says, _see you soon, Kara,_ every time, and then his eyes go blank, like his soul isn’t being translated into a machine even as this body shuts down.

She imagines, and tries not to imagine, his soul hovering in the room for a moment before it flies back to download again. After the first four or five deaths, it doesn't matter that his body is inert on the floor--or impaled on the railing, the one they had before Leoben had it replaced--or collapsed over the kitchen sink. Some part of him is always there. His voice is steady when she can barely find the energy to speak, always expecting more, like she needs a reason to keep fighting when this is all she’s ever had.

Eventually, she stops arguing, stops staying up nights waiting for voices or for Leoben to sneak up at her back because he never does. She finds the only time she needs to reply to him is when she is shoving in the knife--or the fork--or anything that has a point and can take the tension of flesh and bone and make it give. And then all she needs to say is said by shoving just that little bit further and twisting from the wrist.

*

They lined their prisoners up, framed them with Marines and chained them head to foot and one to another, a cluster of Cylons all in a row. It seemed to be a popular idea across the hanger bay: a string of machines floating out an airlock and off in space, lifeless bodies disappearing in the distant vacuum like a shared vision of immaculate vindication. Kara barely felt the stir of interest rippling across the back of her neck, but she looked up when she felt the prickle of familiar attention.

Fifty soldiers between them, both crew and Marines, but his eyes locked with hers and his expression triggered something she had not quite left behind. Her vision went blood red around the edges and she launched herself across the deck, cool metal pressed in her palm and hidden behind her wrist. He did not drop his gaze, he never did, and looked almost happy to see her coming, but half-way across the deck intervening hands came between them.

“Kara, Kara, Starbuck, what the frak, let go of it, drop it!”

She went stiff and made no response to the demands buffeting her face. The screwdriver bit into her skin as she felt it wrenched away from her grip but her eyes never left Leoben’s face. He smiled back and lurched unexpectedly to the side, the pole attached to his chains wrinkling the skin around his neck and drawing him away. And she looked away. Because she would see him soon.

"Starbuck!" She could see right down Lee’s throat thanks to his shouting in her face. "Drop the weapon. Drop it now!"

Her hand was so rigid she could barely feel her fingers, and two Marines had immobilized her arm. She unclenched voluntarily. Months of captivity taught her to be a patient fighter when years of Academy training could not. Lee should be proud; it was what he was always complaining about. Yet he looked at her like she was a stranger.

"I don't know what--" Lee broke off and just glared at her for a moment before he walked off. She shrugged away from Sam's hands.

"Kara..." he said, over her shoulder.

"I'm fine," she said, because everyone always wanted her to talk.

*

He drags her into the shower after the first few days and pushes her head under the spray--warm water with better pressure than she has had in two years. She shudders violently, bent over with his hand on the back of her head and her long hair in her face, lashing out at him behind her with her hands. He shoves his knee between her legs and forces her to kneel. She can't breathe.

She sputters and chokes until she sees black and then he props her up in the corner of the tub and gently fishes the hair out of her mouth. Her chest heaves and her knees tremble and she doesn't move at all. The spray built up steam but she's shivering, half-wet and still in her clothes, trying to catch her breath. She opens her mouth to say something-- _frak you, you could've killed me_ \--but closes it again. The one thing she knows for certain is he doesn’t want her dead, and he'd be happy to tell her why if she says anything. She's heard it too many times already: _I love you, Kara._ She closes her eyes for a moment to block it out--all of it--just for a moment.

"Remember the last time water came between us, Kara?" His lips quirk, that knowing smile he always has, and she doesn't have to see it to know it's there. She ignores him, pressing her lips together in annoyance. But she still can't breathe, the water running down her forehead over her nose. She opens her eyes and gasps, softly.

Her lungs spark painfully. She draws a slow, deep breath and he watches her with concern. She narrows her eyes and forces the words out, "I've been revising my strategy in my head." Her chest feels too heavy under her sodden vest. "Next time I'll do a better job."

He pulls her shirt over her head and she grasps for his wrists involuntarily, alarmed at the way the material clings to her face. He holds it in one hand and brushes her hair away so she can breathe again. Then he lets his eyes drift down her naked chest.

She pushes him away and he just nods, leaves her alone to bathe herself.

*

"He says he'll only speak to Kara."

There was some talk about why it was so necessary they get answers out of him, but Kara wasn't listening. She knew from the moment they brought him aboard that Leoben would ask for her. He hadn't left her alone since New Caprica. Why should his physical presence be any different?

Leoben, the specter of her impending mental breakdown, stood on the other side of Lee and the Old Man and smiled, eerily content. "I'm looking forward to seeing you again, Kara."

He was annoying and repetitive, but she hadn't responded even once since she returned to _Galactica_ and started seeing him. She wasn't stupid, but if she wasn't insane already, he was doing his damnedest to make her look like she was.

Leoben nodded at Sam, and she turned toward him, paying attention. Sam's voice was pitched low because he didn't want her to hear him, and he said, "I don't think she should see him again." He leaned as close as he dared to the Adamas. Sam wasn't military and he didn't like dealing with them, but she couldn't blame him for not wanting her locked in another room with Leoben. It was too bad it wasn't as simple as that.

"He should stay out of it," Leoben remarked, pacing over to Sam. "What is he afraid of? Me or you?"

"I want to talk to him," Kara said. Sam turned around and frowned at her. She snapped, "Somebody has to do it."

"Kara," Sam sighed. Somewhere floating on top of the violent roil of anger that came through her lips, she felt terrible for what he had put up with since they came back to the ship. He was the one who coped with her restlessness, with her inability to sleep next to him for fear of what would happen when she woke up and saw Leoben. When she came back from walking or jogging the decks, sometimes he'd be awake and waiting, knowing she wasn't on duty, anxious eyes silent on her back.

"I spent months by myself with him, what difference are a few more hours going to be?" She said dismissively, and the men leaned away from her words, so easily affected. The Old Man didn't look surprised. She knew exactly what he wanted when he bothered to come down here himself with Lee. The decision was made before they ever told her Leoben's request, and they both knew it. If they wanted to keep arguing about it, they could frakking well go do it somewhere else.

"I already know he doesn't want me dead," she said, and turned her back. Leoben was sprawled on her bunk, hands pillowed behind his head. He looked vaguely impressed.

"Obviously we will take specific protective measures," Lee announced. "He will be chained down. There will be nothing in the cell that could be used as a weapon." She had a feeling he was talking to her, trying to make some point as usual.

“Fine,” she replied. “But if he’s the one you’re worried about, make sure he’s chained to the floor and not just the table this time.”

“Of course he’s the one we’re worried about. Why wouldn’t he be?” Sam snapped. Kara rolled her eyes. Leoben was the only one who noticed.

*

She gives Kacey a bath after she comes home from the medical facility, vaguely thinking it's better she do it than Leoben. Maybe if Kacey had been a boy, she wouldn't feel like she had to protect her. She doesn’t worry about hurting Kacey herself so much if she’s busy keeping Leoben away from her.

At least he knocks before he joins them. He crouches down in the corner by the toilet and fixates on her hands. She tries to ignore him while she's trying to do this thing right: don't get soap in the eyes, wash behind the ears, the kind of stuff she's heard here and there. Kacey hasn't cried, thank the gods, and she just stares from her to Leoben and back again with those big, guileless eyes. Kara can't be doing worse than Leoben would, and that's all that matters now.

Kacey pulls at the curls at the back of her neck, like they're something new and different, while Kara dries her off and wonders if she forgot something. Kacey says something that sounds vaguely like "hair" and Kara loses a smile in surprise. "Hair," she repeats, "That's right." She pauses, caught in Leoben's eye. He watches them like they are answering his frakking prayers right there in front of him.

It doesn't bother her as much when Kacey reaches out and wraps her hand in Kara's hair in response. Kara tries to unravel it without yanking on her scalp, but it doesn't seem to matter, really, because Kacey doesn't pull, she just feels. She runs her small fingers down Kara's long blond hair like a pet. She can see him smiling out of the corner of her eye, but Leoben is easy to ignore when something else is more important. It doesn't matter that he's a Cylon here in this bathroom, when he could be anyone else she just wants to ignore.

*

Kara was late to her first session with Leoben; she could hear the Old Man and Tigh and Sam discussing what a bad idea this all was. They dropped their conversation and turned to her when she came through the hatch, but it all started up again when they saw how she was dressed.

"Kara, what the frak?" Sam, who hadn't changed his clothes any more than she had since they got back to the ship, looked her up and down like she'd done it for him. His eyes lit up and for a moment, she hated it. In her ear, Leoben laughed.

"Kara, are you sure that's the best approach?" Adama asked, like he cared.

Tigh gazed at her with his one eye and walked over to open Leoben's cell. Lee, stepped forward, face a mask and unflinching. She turned around and raised her hands. A comment about his need to frisk her half-formed in her head, and then drifted away unnoticed. But she didn't blame them for suspecting she had a weapon tucked between her legs or down her cleavage--and Lee checked both. She'd thought about it.

She stood in front of the clear door and waved her hand over it. "Open it," she said firmly, for good measure. The tips of her newly cut hair brushed against her naked neck. She stiffened her back.

Leoben waited until the cell closed behind her before he raised his head from his arms on the metal table, starting to smile. "Kara--" He stopped.

She smirked. "Don't tell me you're surprised. Didn't you see this coming down your path?" She sauntered toward him, just noticing the coolness of the air on all the skin she had exposed. She ran her hand across his shoulders as she walked behind him, and threaded her fingers through the back of his hair. "If you didn't see this, maybe you don't know as much as you thought."

He said nothing, rolling his eyes back in his head to look at her under the curled edges of his eyelashes. "You look beautiful," he said. He managed to sound completely sincere.

Her fingers tightened on the roots of his hair. "You'd say that no matter what I wore," she hissed.

The corner of his lip curved. "But I always mean it."

She let go of him and slowly sat in the other chair, around the corner of the table. She crossed her legs and he looked at them. She always got the impression he was more interested in studying her than feeling her up. "I don't care what you mean, Leoben. I want to know the truth."

His chest rose in a mocking laugh. "Truth," he repeated. He smiled. "What do you know about the truth?"

She shook her head. "You first."

His chin dropped to his shoulder as he watched her carefully. "If I answer your questions. You'll answer mine."

His gaze held hers. She crossed her arms and leaned back. "That's the deal."

He nodded eventually in assent, running his fingertips over the table. One of them was mocking her inside her head. There was never a time he would not talk to her. She didn’t need to pretend.

*

She never kills him in bed. The one time she sneaks up the stairs and creeps over him with a shard of mirror in her hand, he rolls over and traps her under him. His hand presses hers against the pillow and her chest heaves intimately against his, sharing his breath. "I'm glad you decided to join me at last," he says.

"Came to kill you," she grits out. She'd cut herself; his fingers slip in the blood. Every time he shifts his grip it acts like a tickle of pain from her fingertips. She gasps when his fingernail catches the inside of the cut, and he chuckles.

"I don't think so." He tilts his head closer to hers and her biceps shiver in his grip, trying to get away without pressing against him. "You're not stupid, Kara. You can't kill me, and you know I always come back."

"It's worth it for any second without you here," she hisses.

"This game takes both of us," he murmurs. "Each of us play our parts. What would you do, Kara, if I didn't come back?" She feels his nose, cold against her own. In the dark, she can't tell if they connected by chance.

He pulls her to her feet and bandages her hand himself. He wouldn't want her to bleed to death, she supposes. He startles her when he kisses her hand and says something that sounds like prayer.

*

Leoben tilted his head after a moment and examined her face. "You need to sleep," he murmured.

She laughed, harshly, aware of their audience. "Come on, Leoben, you can do better than that. That was an easy guess."

He scanned her with his eyes, unsmiling. "Are you playing me, Kara?" he asked.

She smiled dryly. "Weren't you playing me that whole time?"

He paused, as if he was thinking about it. "The shape of the banks may change, but the river still exists."

She leaned forward in her chair and looked in his eyes. The lights glistened in them and she saw a reflection of him dying over, and over, and over again. "Exactly," she said, letting the word trip slowly over her lips.

His eyes squinted and a line appeared on his forehead. He looked haggard under the cell’s lights. “New Caprica was a journey and we shared it,” he said, almost cautious.

She wanted to laugh and she bowed her head instead and shrugged uncomfortably. "The truth is," she sighed. "I guess I miss...it." She paused, rubbing her fingers against the edge of the table. She kept her eyes on his lax hands, on the metal block restraining them. "It was easier. It was...quiet. And there was Kacey." He was listening intently. She frowned. "I haven't forgiven you for making me think she was our daughter, by the way."

He hesitated, just long enough, but the way he looked at her was--not sorry. Hungry. "The pattern needed to be changed," he said, barely moving his lips. She leaned into him, his thigh steady under her knee. His teeth flashed. "Now you know you wouldn't be a bad mother."

She flicked her lips in some gesture she couldn't even interpret for herself. "After that first hospital visit, anyway." The words don't cut as they pass through her lips; for some reason, reminiscing with him is easier than opening up to Cottle, or Adama, or Sam. She’d like to think it’s because she put on a dress, cut her hair, and agreed to do this for someone else.

"We could still have one," he replied, looking up at her with the light in his eyes. "A child."

She snorted. "I don't think my husband would like that very much."

He ducked his head and smiled in response. "That won't last," he remarked.

She didn't want to ask if he meant her excuse or her marriage. There were some things she wasn't ready to joke about yet. "That's all for today," she said abruptly, and stood up. He said nothing and she didn't have to look back to know he was watching as she left.

Tigh, Sam, and Lee were waiting outside. "What the hell was that?" Lee asked tersely.

She looked at them wearily. She had hoped they had left, tired of watching her play games with Leoben. "I want him off-balance."

"But you didn't get anything out of him," Sam said, crossing his arms. He looked skeptical, not mad. That made it better. That made it...easier to look at him.

"I will," was all she said. She went to change out of her dress, take her make-up off, maybe get back to the gym.

Sam followed. "Helo says you're gunning to get your wings back."

Her steps shortened. Where was he going with this? "Maybe you shouldn't ask Helo what I want."

"You inviting me to ask you instead?"

She glanced at him. Was he scared?

"Of course he's scared." She jumped when Leoben's head popped out from behind Sam's. "You're not the Kara he married. He barely even knew you in the first place."

Sam reached for her. "Hey, are you okay?"

She yanked her arm away from him. "I'm fine, Sam. Go away," she said to Leoben. She met Sam's eyes reluctantly and saw them go distant like death. Her gut slammed against her chest and her entire body clenched violently in reaction. He was always too frakking close to her. "Just...leave me alone," she muttered, and turned away from him. Sam let her go, but Leoben dogged her steps.

*

She sleeps on the couch, and she is pretty sure Leoben is keeping the apartment—her cell—cold on purpose, so she can't get comfortable there. She doesn't actually sleep much during the night. Eventually, escape plans segue into schemes to get his guard down. She’s good at slipping through people's defenses; without a plane or a gun or anything else, it might be the last thing she trusts about herself.

But what Leoben wants is complicated. Asking for things means opening up. Letting him think she's relaxing means revealing herself. For a long time, being locked up meant she didn’t have to compromise, and being his prisoner was her part of the fight--until he brings Kacey back and being nice is the only thing she can do for her. Kacey's eyes are so open and they follow everything so silently, and yelling doesn't change anything, anyway, so Kara stops. It's okay, for some time, because as long as Kacey doesn't look frightened, as long as she thinks it's all a game and no one wants to hurt her, Kara is doing the right thing. She’s still fighting, but it’s for her.

Then she gets restless. She starts sneaking upstairs after Kacey is asleep and sharing harsh whispers with Leoben. It isn't enough; it isn't nearly enough to huddle close to him in the dusky light and limit herself to insulting him and his Cylon kind. She's begun to crave his dying expression, the sense of relief that she is still capable of killing him and right now she isn't sure she is because it's been too long.

Arguing with him is more personal. She would stop, but she is afraid she'll go crazy from the silence. She baits him and sometimes, because she is just that good, he responds with violence. He grabs her wrist tight enough to leave a mark, knocks her feet from under her, or slams her face against a wall. Then stops, listens for Kacey downstairs. In the ten seconds of silence when she can't hear anything but her heart pounding in her ears, Kara feels relief. He hardly ever hits back. It's a constant reminder that somebody that patient can't be human, but it makes her feel inhuman, too. What kind of person hit somebody who wouldn't defend themselves? Maybe the same kind of person who left a child to fall on the stairs.

Maybe it isn't comforting because it gives her a reason to fight back. Maybe it is just the only remnant of her life she can still recognize. Maybe when his hand slides back off her neck and he spins her around, and for a split second she thinks of kissing him because she can't kill him now-- not with Kacey in the house--she should be grateful she still remembers how to be herself. Even if it takes Leoben to remind her, even if she wouldn't know how to remember if he wasn't there at all.

*

"When I look at you, I still want to kill you." She figured Leoben would get suspicious if she didn't say that. She figured he could read it in her eyes. "But if I did...there wouldn't be any more of you to replace you, would there?"

He didn't have to reply, because they both knew that once again, faith was his only answer. His eyelids flickered. The cell was soundproof, and soundless for a moment. She wasn't surprised Helo and Tigh patted her down for a weapon a second time. She wore her tanks for the first time since she came back aboard and curled her feet under her where she sat in the chair opposite Leoben. It would be easy to kill him now. So many sharp objects on a battleship.

"I think I would miss you," she said.

He looked like he believed that. He nodded like he accepted it, and it would have been a victory except for the echo. The Leoben she was pretty sure was her own hallucination nodded, too. She sighed. "I don't know what to do."

"The first step to finding god is acknowledging your need for him," Leoben replied. Kara shifted.

"The way I see it, faith isn't enough for your god. It has to be on his terms."

"There is only one right way to see god," Leoben replied calmly. She could see that he has acclimated to his surroundings. She wondered how he did it.

"He doesn't see what you see," the hallucination answered her unspoken question.

"There are many copies. The variations are all a part of you," Kara said aloud. "You can sit here and sit somewhere else and it's all the same."

Leoben, hands bound and weighted to his chair, watched her closely. He said nothing. Was he speaking to her some other way? Did he know that some other part of him could talk directly to her head?

She smirked. "I'm disappointed," she said, getting her feet under her again. "All this time I thought you had a secret. But maybe there's no secret after all. The big mystery is that machines--" she flicked his forehead, index finger glancing off his skin as he turned his head at just the right minute, but she kept talking-- "aren't *like* people. Wow, I guess I figured it out." She walked slowly back to the exit.

"I was never surprised," Leoben said quietly behind her. She threw a glance over her shoulder, too brief to catch his eyes. "I let you kill me because it had to happen. The pain was the same. But I always saw it coming."

She stared at the glass door so hard she thought it might crack, and it took her a long minute to realize it was open. Lee stood there staring at her. Waiting for her to get over her inability to move forward, to take the steps out of the damn cell.

The only reason to move was the excuse to brush past him, slamming against his shoulder as she went.

"Real mature," he said, sealing Leoben in.

*

She tries to kill him for real just once after Kacey's arrival. She is curled up with her lips close to Kacey's ear one afternoon--on the side that isn't covered by the bandage around her head. The little girl has barely spoken beyond the "hi" when Leoben introduced them and the gibberish before the accident happened. "Do you know the names of the gods, Kacey?" she asks, keeping her voice in the space between them. Kacey stares at her. It doesn't matter. Kara had been taught that the very names of the gods have power. She starts to whisper their names, right there, so they flow across the little space between her and her daughter's ear.

She hopes it spreads peace over the little girl just for that moment, as it always had for her. And it works; she is lost in the words as she speaks them, watching Kacey's eyes grow sleepy as she starts to slur the names like one, long litany. She thinks there must still be power in belief, and she's drifting off herself, all the exhaustion of everything finally dragging her down, so she doesn't hear Leoben come up behind her until he drags her off the bed by the belt on her pants. She watches Kacey's eyes open and land on them with no expression, like she's already learned not to react. Kara says something comforting, like, "We're just going to go talk in the kitchen, baby," and she goes with him, away from Kacey's bed.

She’d picked up a thermometer from Kacey's bedside in the sterile room where she was treated for the head wound, and she still has it. It's not sharp, but anything can kill someone with enough pressure behind it. For the first time, she kills him because he asked for it and not because she wanted to. Red on red, the blood rises along with the mercury and his blood is as hot as hers.

When he comes back, downloaded, he kneels down by Kacey's sick bed and says his own prayers, half-instructional and maybe half for-real, and Kara lays there curled around Kacey and sharing her pillow and has to listen to his words: "God, forgive Kara for her disbelief and grant her the mercy she needs," and on and on endlessly. She takes Kacey's hand and prays to the gods in her head, just to spite him. Soon, she finds her words get mixed up with his, the same words, the same requests, and she goes back to reciting their names like a list, because names have the power to define and he can’t take that from her.

*

In the middle of the night--the sleep cycle for most the crew, anyway--Kara showed up at Leoben's cell. The Marines tried to turn her away. "He's not supposed to have visitors."

She crossed her arms and stared them down. "I'm not a visitor and it's part of the interrogation routine. Don't worry, boys," she added, softening her voice with effort. "You can search me."

They looked at each other and hesitated some more. She'd crawled away from Sam hours ago to pace the decks, fighting the urge to drop down the length of one ladder and a few steps to the detention quarters with his voice beckoning-- _either way, you'll be spending the night with me_ \--knowing he was waiting for her. They weren't going to keep her away now that she was here. "Just let me the hell in," she snapped.

He was sitting up on the cot, head resting against the wall, watching her expectantly. She stopped outside the glass, because they could only let her in the room, not inside the cell with him. She didn't know how to talk to him when they were this far apart, when she couldn't distract him with her body and her hands and smile at him or grit her teeth and flash her eyes, grab his mouth or twist his arm or find a rib and shove a knife in.

"What did you do to my head?" she demanded.

He was silent. It made her angry, all the anger she lacked before suddenly filling her up till she was choking on it. "What the frak did you do to me while I was unconscious, Leoben?"

He smiled eerily. The lights were dimmed and her vision of him was bent, doubled on the glass. "So it's true. I'm in your head. You can hear me. We're connected, Kara."

"Are you insane?" she demanded. "Are you frakking insane? We aren't friends now because you put a chip in my head! Is that what you think? Did you put something inside me, Leoben, while I was helpless? What kind of love is that?" She slammed her hand against the wall of the cage. "What is that?"

He didn't move. "Go to the doctor, Kara," he suggested calmly. "You'll see. We haven't done anything to you."

"Just played with my head, you mean. You’re a frakking expert."

He looked at her compassionately, sitting serenely on the far side of his cell. He was chained to his cot so he probably couldn't move and even that made her angry. He didn't have to do anything but sit. "Kara. You think so little of your humanity?"

She stared at him, hand hot against the reinforced glass. "I guess you saw this. Saw me coming here. I guess you think you know me pretty frakking well, huh, Leoben?"

He frowned down at his bonds. "Kara," he repeated her name fondly. He smiled slightly, like he was thinking something else.

She sneered at him, curling her fingers, trying to dig her fingernails into the glass. "You have no idea, Leoben. You never change, but I can."

He didn't look up. "You don't really believe that, Kara." He shrugged. "That's what really bothers you."

Kara turned her back and leaned against the glass wall, clenching her fist to her forehead. The cell was silent and dimmed for sleep and Kara slid down it and rested her head on the wall. Her bunk should have been comfortable when filled with her husband, Sam content just to curl around her and keep her company. But curled around her knees with Leoben at her back, locked up tight, was somehow the assurance she needed to sleep.

*

It should be more difficult. Months before, when he first told her what he wanted her to say, it was hard to believe he could be so stupid. They were just words and she would never say them; not because she wouldn't mean it, but because she could never give in.

But saying it aloud doesn’t change anything. “I love you,” she says, looking up at him. And saying it once makes it easy to repeat again. “I love you, Leoben.” He asks because he believes, not because saying it aloud makes it real. She tells herself it’s a lie because it comes so easily. _Kara Thrace loves this man._ The words are real but not honest. They can’t define her if she takes them back.

She is closer to him than ever before when she sticks the knife in, close enough to taste the blood when it surges into his mouth instead of bubbling over her hand. It’s the equivalent of crossing her fingers as she lies to him.

She pulls back and looks at him as he's starting to die. But she misses it--the moment--because she looks past him and Kacey is still there. Kacey means more than a frakking Cylon's twentieth death.

*

Kara wasn't asleep when the bad dream started, so she could hear herself whimpering at the same time Sam did. "Artemis, Aphrodite..." she paused. "Artemis, Aphrodite..." she started over again. "I believe in the gods," she told Leoben, tilting his head down at her over the curtain to their bunk. "I believe there are many gods, among them Artemis, Aphrodite--" Why couldn't she remember them?

"Kara," Sam said soothingly, curling her into his chest. "Shh, I've got you. It's okay."

"What are their names?" she whispered, a broken sound and she hated it. She could still see the gleam of Leoben's eyes through the crack in the curtain. Her hand that was trapped beneath Sam’s back spasmed and she tried to push him away.

"Kara," he murmured, moist against her neck. She was pressed against the wall of their bunk and he was falling asleep again.

She gritted her teeth and reached out for him. Through the curtain, into the open air. She waited for Leoben to take her hand and pull her out to him. His grip was warm and dry and she half-sat. The knife she kept tucked under the mattress on her side of the bed was somehow in her hand.

Sam jumped. "Kara," he said, and his voice was wide awake all the sudden. "What the frak are you doing?"

She looked down at him. The reflection off the blade alighted in his eyes. He stared up at her, his hand around her wrist. "I need that," she said clearly.

"Gods, shut up," someone grumbled. "Trying to sleep here."

"Let the frak go," she insisted.

"Kara," Sam said carefully.

"He's putting you in danger," Leoben said from outside. "What if I have a knife I'm about to stick in your back? You're defenseless."

"Let the frak go of me, Sam!"

The rings of their curtain scraped against the pole as they parted. Lee was suddenly standing on their left. "What's going on here?" he demanded. He took in Kara's pose, Sam's expression, and the knife posed between their hands. He stopped. "Kara?"

"Frak it," she said. "I can always get another." She released it and slid off Sam's lap.

Sam yanked his hand away when it knicked his thumb on the way down. "Frak. Kara. Just get back in bed. You're having a nightmare."

She hissed at him. "I'm wide awake, Sam."

She snapped the curtain closed and turned her back on him. Then she realized her hand wasn't caught in Leoben's grasp but in Lee’s instead. She frowned at him. "What's your problem, Apollo?" She yanked away.

She let herself out of the hatch, noisy enough to wake the entire bunch up but she didn't care. She wasn't steady, lurching around like it was darker than it was on deck, and Leoben steadied her with a hand on her back that turned out to be Lee again. She turned and glared at him in exasperation. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"Yes, actually," he replied with a snort, his forehead wrinkled. "But you seem to need--"

"Don't even--"

He stopped. He eyed her for a moment, and he could go either way--she never knew him anymore--but she just waited warily. He shook his head, like he was done with her. "If you want to get back on rotation, you'd better get some sleep."

"I never understood why you liked him," Leoben said softly, re-appearing by her side. She flinched and watched Lee walk away.

*

She meets Kacey's eyes for two seconds--three--four--as Leoben is falling away from her hands, landing on the other side of the staircase.

Kacey only looks at Kara, eyes free of the horror she's just been through. And Kara smiles, because Kacey is okay, and that means Kara wins. She won, and now Kacey needs to be picked up, hauled up the stairs to Sam and safety and _Galactica_ and somewhere, maybe the Old Man, because won't he want to meet her? He is waiting somewhere, waiting to see if they're okay and she feels nothing but relief.

And while she is shielding Kacey's eyes, it doesn't matter that she leaves Leoben dead on the floor again. She doesn't let Kacey look back, so Kara doesn't look back, either.

*

"How long has she been spending nights in there with him?" Roslin demanded, as if Kara wasn't standing right in front of them.

Helo looked embarrassed for her. Kara crossed her arms and frowned at all of them.

"This is unacceptable," Adama said, cutting through the rest of the bullshit, not wanting to hear it. Kara recognized his anger, the righteous indignation. She'd broken the code. She'd gotten emotionally involved without telling him. "The Cylon has been coddled enough. It's about time we got serious."

His words fell like a command. Everyone in his quarters was silent. Except Leoben. "Serious," he repeated. He looked at Kara, carefully. "I guess he thinks you're having fun."

Kara’s jaw locked down over her flinch. "I killed him over and over again on New Caprica and he just downloaded and came back to start over again. He's not going to crack under torture," she announced. She didn't look directly at him. "What I am doing is working. It will work, because he doesn't expect it."

Leoben shook his head as Roslin glanced at the Old Man. "They don't believe you," Leoben said. "You don't believe yourself."

Kara bit her lip. "You don't believe me," she said angrily. "I know what he’ll respond to. I know what he wants."

"We didn't send you in there to get personal with the Cylon," Roslin replied.

Kara jerked her chin in irritation. "That's exactly why you sent me in there, because it is *personal*. I'm personal to him and you don't give a frak how it feels to me, you just want me to get the job done."

The room hinged on a moment, everyone frozen because she said what she thought. If they all wanted her to pretend, why the frak were they complaining?

"Regardless of your methods, he hasn't given *you* anything, either, Captain Thrace," Roslin said coolly.

Kara opened her mouth to correct her name--her rank wasn't officially reinstated, and her last name wasn't technically Thrace--then realized it wasn't really important and she didn't give a frak what anybody called her, anyway. "He will," she said. "If I go in there right now and tell him to give me something, he will."

Roslin turned and surveyed her critically. "You have absolute confidence in him?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Leoben smiled. Kara re-crossed her arms. "I know I've got him where I want him."

The other woman shook her head. "That's where I believe you are mistaken, Captain."

Kara glared at her. "With all due respect, ma'am," she began.

"No, Captain," Roslin cut her off. "As you so rightly pointed out, we have sacrificed your welfare for what information this Cylon may or may not ever reveal, and I think it's time to decide what is most important, here." She swiveled and sent her gaze toward Adama. "It's about time we stopped letting the Cylons frak with us," Roslin said. He nodded briefly and sat down at his desk. Kara hated every frakking one of them in this office, for thinking they still had any idea how to live.

"She's picturing me floating out an airlock right now," Leoben said. He braced himself in one of the empty corners of the room, arms outstretched against both walls. His eyes never left her face. "She's done it before. She'd do it again." He turned down his chin and eyed Kara. "Would you miss me if I was gone?" he asked softly.

Kara said, "No."

Roslin ignored her. "I'm authorizing the execution of the remaining Cylon prisoners tomorrow at--0600, Admiral?"

"0600," he agreed, handing Helo the papers he'd just signed.

Kara found the only one paying attention to her anymore--besides Leoben, and he wasn't real--was Lee Adama. She narrowed her eyes at him and he looked away.

“Arguments should be solved with love,” Leoben murmured. She crossed her arms and glared at Helo as he tried to get around her to the hatch. “Strife pollutes the waters and makes it difficult to see.”

*

In the middle of any other day, suddenly the Cylons were marching in their barely formed streets. They marched all over their newborn civilization and the bare living they all had joined together to scratch out of their memories. Kara often didn’t see Sam for days upon days, both of them involved in community projects and not very experienced at letting someone know where they were going, but she left him in the tent that morning because he was sick and she never came back.

Leoben found her himself, and it only took one of him to haul her away. The first thing he said to her when she woke up in that apartment was, “you’re going to love me.”

And she said, “You’re frakking insane.”

He smiled and stroked her cheek, because she was still stunned and drowsy and at the time nothing really seemed that threatening. She would be back on the streets and fighting by the end of the day, she thought. He would threaten her and then she would find some way to leave. “You are very special, Kara Thrace,” he murmured. “You can run and you can fight me, but every corner you turn, I will be there. Eventually, you will get tired of running and learn to wait. And that is when you will find your destiny.”

“Frak off,” she slurred. His hand was on her forehead, and the blinding light behind him lit up his whole face.

“You will find god in everything you see and you will find you wish to hold onto god’s gifts rather than push them away. And Kara,” he said gently, pushing the hair off her forehead—she was so cold and his hand was warm and she wanted him to touch her, right then she craved it—“You will put your arms around me and say you love me. I have faith what I believe will come to pass.” He kissed her forehead. It was the only time he held her that way.

*

Everyone who wanted to see a dead Cylon came to watch the prisoners get thrown out of _Galactica_ ’s unused launch bay.

Kara stood rigid in her uniform, neatly pressed and still uncomfortable, the first time she'd worn it since she got back. Informed that only military personnel could attend, she decided it was time to reenlist formally.

Leoben, first in line and manacled from head to foot, was prodded along with two poles against the front and back of his neck. He sought her despite his limited visibility, even from the middle of the Marine circle still able to pick her out of the crowd.

"Nothing is so obvious it doesn't need to be spoken," he said. It was Leoben's voice, but his lips didn't move and for once, he was the only one there. The Leoben that she only saw when she wasn't being careful, when she forgot she was Starbuck and Cylons couldn't frak with her head, he wasn't around. Not in the middle of this crowd, the press of uniforms shouting and pushing, their anger bloodthirsty like one of the Scrolls’ ancient rites of blood spilled in a giant coliseum, the act of human vengeance on something the masses didn’t like. The gods didn’t want today’s sacrifice. It was offal before them and it turned Kara’s stomach.

She fell into step with the Marines. "Where will you go?" she asked.

Leoben didn't answer the question. "Kara," he said. The gunner behind her grabbed her arm. "My vision has not yet come to pass."

Kara pulled back. Leoben turned his head as far to the side as the bonds would let him, peering at her over the cuff around his neck. "I saw a different time," he repeated. He sounded urgent. He wanted her to understand before he died. Even as they shoved him forward and away from her at last, she couldn’t give him what he wanted. She couldn’t give in. It was who she was.

He disappeared past the airlock seals and she pushed through the crowd around the control room. Lee, in combat dress, was guarding the door. He looked at her blankly. She shoved at him. "Let me in there, Lee. I want to watch."

"You aren't authorized."

"Frak your frakking authorization, do you think I care?"

His eyes flared and crackled with anger. She tilted her chin up at him, but he wasn't going to hit her. Lee Adama didn't hit subordinates in the middle of a rowdy crowd. "Let me in, Lee," she hissed, getting up close to him so he couldn’t help but feel her, smell her, stare into her eyes. He could push her back and shove her aside, but he wouldn’t because she wouldn’t leave and he knew she would stay there until he gave her what she asked.

He hesitated. He was going to let her in. She breathed on him and waited and finally he shuffled to the side, nothing going to stop him because he didn't really give a damn, and she went in. He stared at her as she passed, and she told him with her eyes that she didn’t care what he thought.

Roslin and the Old Man stood on either side of Kara while the red light flashed to warn them the release was opening. Leoben's gaze reflected off the enforced glass and became two sets of eyes, watching her patiently. He was waiting for something--not death. He expected something from her. He couldn’t get close to the shield, and she stood behind the control panel not fisting her hands, aware she was being observed. But it was eerily the same as always.

He mouthed, "See you soon." Then he was gone, a doll swept out on the wind.

Adama leaned forward and re-engaged the air lock. The doors started to slide shut as fast as they had opened. Kara didn't move. There were more where he came from; she ought to know that better than anyone. It was only one death among many.

One pair of Leoben's eyes still met hers, calmly shoring her up against the wave of isolation--she didn't know what the frak was going to fill her days now--until she could move again, and she didn't turn away. She couldn't turn her head until she didn't want him to be there, until she could stop hearing him promise her over and over: _you’re going to hold me in your arms, you’re going to embrace me, you’re going to tell me that you love me, and you’re going to mean it next time_. The only thing connecting who she was now with who she had been was her inability to believe him.

*

Kara was on the other side of the airlock with her hand on the shield. Leoben looked back at her, hair barely dried from the last time the Marines dunked his head.

She was glad, just for that moment, that Laura Roslin was in charge. She gave the order to release the locks and Kara stood there and looked at him, because it didn't matter anymore. Her job was over and there was only this--unable to look away, she needed to watch. Death by vacuum was supposed to be clean and neat, an ending that always hovered at the edge of a pilot's life. It was not the death she would choose, completely alone for her last few seconds, but it was something she’d been forced to think about. And sometimes, there were dreams about it.

Roslin will stand back and nod at the man who will push the button, and pretend he was an empty shell of a machine as he floated backward into space. But Kara has to look into his eyes, and if she looks into the eyes of someone while she kills them, she has to ask the gods to show them mercy on the other side. It's not her call to kill him, though Roslin’s was probably right. But if he has a soul, Kara has a feeling she will meet it again in the next life if not in this one, and so she has to ask mercy for him if she wants it for herself.

He said he would see her again. The gods didn't send her a sign of life after death, but he kept his promise and returned in this one instead.


End file.
